going nuts for nuts

check out the shadow. :P

It's coming...

Ri-bobo san!!!

this is rye sour dough bread. :)
http://www.yankeegrocery.com/sourdough_bread/recipe.html

It's a little denser than the white sourdough bread i've been making, and of course more flavourful as there's a tbsp of molasses in the dough. overall..it's alright. :) i might use the recipe again but i think i'll kneed it more.
I went to the baking store on Friday and bought a whole bunch of stuff, one of which is oat bran. I shaped the dough in oat bran. I cut down the flour stated in the recipe. i halved the recipe - and used 2 cups of white flour for the starter, 1 cup of rye + 1 1/2 cups of white flour (half bread, half all purpose). they asked for a stiff dough, but i prefer a dough with higher hydration (more water to flour ratio).
so here's a picture of what you should see in your dough - gluten strands.







Anyway, along the japanese theme...heehee. :) konichiwa!

yummy yummy. i found this packet of redbean paste at the asian grocery store. i just had to buy it! i wasn't sure whether i wanted to make the chinese deep fried one..or ..or...or..ANPAN BUNS!

look at that! so kawaii!

Definitely Sun Moulin worthy. the one rolled in sesame seeds is plain - i ran out of redbean paste for the last ball of dough. If you know any anpan recipes, let me know - http://starbulletin.com/2001/12/26/features/request.html

The one i used was alright..hm..actually, not bad. 7/10. but sun moulin's bread is definitely nicer. and i don't know how to make the flat bun..i tried but take jadi. if you can think of a way, let me know too.

my life

the walk to school. it was a particularly foggy day so i thought i'll take some pictures for you. :)

eating eating eating

this week i went out twice for dinner!
the first was at zen gardens - ok. veg chinese food. "chinese food". :P
the second was at kelseys - normal western stuff i.e. burger

we had movie night on thursday, i baked cookies. but i made it wrong. haha. its ok. the taste was alright. i wanted to make chocolate cake - but i didn't have enough chocolate. ..now i do. MUAHHAHA!! heehee.

anyway, buttery jam cookies - i didn't put enough flour i think..because it's kinda soft. http://creampuffsinvenice.typepad.com/cream_puffs_in_venice/2006/11/cookbook_spotli.html this is my favourite picture of the cookies.

mommy - lilyng2000.blogspot.com
aunty lily's blog. :)

my empty plate. haha

aunty annie's..

Name the vegetable:

I think che, that as we are trying new recipes, we should save a soft copy on .doc of the recipes we like. :)
i saved the muffin one from cream puff and the chocolate chip cookie from anita.

On friday i had dinner at black hole bistro. the food is getting better - as compared to the tasteless lamb shank i had on my first visit.
i had pork tenderloin wrapped in seaweed served with a miso sauce. on the side, there was organic sorrel and pasta.

http://creampuffsinvenice.typepad.com/cream_puffs_in_venice/2006/11/the_month_of_br_2.html

i tried pretzels today. the smoke alarm went off twice. how embarrassing ..hopefully it didn't really wake the guys downstairs, but i think it did. :P

she made 8 with the dough, i only made 5. but i think it could have risen for longer or in a warmer place but i needed to bake them before 8am.


they don't look very impressive hor? but they taste pretty good. i had them with cinnamon and sugar. :)

Comfort food

It's interesting how we make associations with what we eat and an emotion. When you are down, what do you eat?
It's not like when you are down, what do you wear? a string of pearls?
Eating and drinking seems to be strongly related to emotion..well, not seems to be, i'm sure it is.

today i made my favourite - soft boil eggs. I ate it with steam mantao because I have no toast.
I miss home and eating soft boil eggs at Avenue K and other kopitiams. I even miss going to KLCC to meet mommy and have kaya toast and eggs and mmmm..delicious ipoh kopi before walking my 5 rounds (in KLCC..round and round window shopping). I miss going to ISetan and checking out their bakery. I miss choosing a "foreign" drink from Isetan's supermarket.
perhaps it's a constant reinforcement. When you go out, you eat the same thing. when you are down, you eat the same thing. and the cognitive association reinforces itself. For now, I just want to go home. but I can't. So I eat soft boil eggs and think of the good times.

Cheche- it'll be ok. you can eat soft boil eggs too. that doesn't change. :)
love you

redeemed

:)
disappointed at my "minimal effort bread". i contemplated making my 2nd batch of hot cross buns but i decided against it..and chose to make ENGLISH MUFFINS!!
thanks emma for the recipe.

instead of 4 cups of flour - which you should use..i used like 2 1/2 - 3 cups of flour to keep the dough soft. but in reality, english muffins are pretty firm. mine were nice and soft though. so depends on what you like.
i made half plain and half with the hot cross bun mix - raisins, sultanas and currants.
sooooo good! mm.
pictures to follow

English Muffins (Emma’s recipe)

About twenty 3-inch muffins
English muffins are always baked on a greased griddle.
Have all ingredients at about 75 degrees

A.
1 cup Hot water
½ cup scalded milk
2 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt

B.
Dissolve for ten minutes 1 packet yeast in 2 tbsp warm water (85º)

Method
Combine in a mixing bowl A.
Combine the two mixtures.
Sift before measuring 4 cups all-purpose flour
Beat 2 cups flour gradually into the milk mixture.
Cover bowl with damp cloth.
Let rise in warm place (85º) for about 1½ hours or until it collapses back into bowl.
Beat in 3 tbsp softened butter
Beat or knead in the remaining flour.
Let rise again until doubled in bulk.
You may put it in greased rings for the final rising, filling them ½ full. If not using rings, place dough on a lightly floured board. Pat or press until ¾ in thick.
Cut it into rounds about 3-inches thick.
Let them stand until the dough has doubled in bulk.
Cook until light brown on a fairly hot, well-buttered griddle.
Turn them once with a pancake turner.

Cool slightly on rack.
To separate, take two forks back to back and pry them open horizontally.
Butter generously and toast

I also made Katherine Hepburn brownies..from a couple of posts back.

I think I cooked it a little too long. I wasn't sure because it was bubbling..looks like witches brewprobably from all the fat in it. Tomorrow is the movie night..but some people can't go. so i thought i'll just bake the brownies early and give it to them straight instead. it tastes alright. rich. could do with a bit of sugar. but i don't have icing sugar.

Reminiscing about...

After my belated birthday celebration with my uni classmates the week before last, I finally invited Jier, Rachel and Felix over for dinner last Sunday. It took me a week and many revisions of the same cooking mangazines (I don't own cookbooks) to decide on what to cook. After a few hit & misses, I decided on lamb shanks with polenta & mushroom bolognese and roasted vegetables and salad.


I read few a few lamb shank recipes and just combined them all. It took me almost 2 hours at Victoria Market trying to locate everything I needed. I marinated the lamb shanks the night before with onion, garlic, herbs and red wine. The next day, I seared the marinated lamb shanks, then cooked some pancetta with tomatoes, carrots, onion, garlic, rosemary, thyme and red wine and put the whole lot into a casserole-like dish (it was a very tight fit). It was covered it with foil & just left it in the oven to cook. I think it cooked a total of 4 hours...but...hmmm...I still didn't think it was soft enough.

I got the polenta and mushroom bolognese recipe from Gourmet Traveller. It's basically 2 layers of polenta baked with mushroom bolognese (obvious huh). The recipe uses a mix of mushrooms, thyme, onion and garlic, and tomatoes...interesting. It's meant to cater to vegetarians but it makes a very nice side dish.



They brought over stuff to make lemon lime bitters which turned out really good...I can't believe that they charge anything from $3.50 for it!!

And dessert...I have to give ALL credit to Paul for making opera cake the night before and then giving me a good three- quarters of it for me to try and then for me to feed my guests. The cake was really so good...
You can read all about his until 3am efforts here: http://ptuls.livejournal.com/

We had a good time laughing and just talking. It's nice being able to move into the working world together. It's nice too that the dynamics of our friendships have not changed after J&R's wedding. These are the guys that drove me to the supermarket, killed the ants attacking my box of cereal, changed my lightbulbs multiple times, listened to all my dramas and ....well..these are my friends. Thanks guys.

Baking Biscotti

I had a sudden biscotti craving about a week ago due to my scouring MANY MANY italian recipes in an attempt to decide what to cook for my old classmates who were coming for dinner.

So, I did... I actually made 2 batches on 2 consecutive days. The first was hazelnut & chocolate and the second was almond and chocolate. I liked the hazelnut one better.

The recipe actually called for all purpose flour with just a pinch of baking soda. I only had self-raising flour, so I made do.

Mixing the ingredients:
Biscotti logs:

The biscotti had to be baked twice. First as logs for about 20 minutes. After that you let it cool and then slice it and bake again. I had mega problems trying to slice them to the 0.5cm asked for. Mine were at least 1 cm thick. Didn't quite bother me although I would like to know how to slice them thin.

And voila!

I liked them! The recipe didn't make as much as I thought although this was probably because I sliced them so thickly. Haha...that gave me the excuse for the 2nd batch the next day..

p.s. excuse the bad lighting and the funny shade of green of the pictures of the flour & biscotti logs. I took the pictures at night and obviously used the wrong settings

So close..

the bread is baking..
but i was so close to perfection. until the last minute - when i placed the dough into the heated pyrex bowl. i flipped it..and it went to the side. :( not the middle. the side. so i have a lop sided bread.

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-11-13T131109Z_01_L30918060_RTRUKOC_0_US-FRANCE-POILANE.xml&pageNumber=0&imageid=&cap=&sz=13&WTModLoc=NewsArt-C1-ArticlePage3

check this out. she's really cool and mature. :) must have been tough for her.

and then i thought to myself, i want to save the world too! o_O ok. she isn't saving the world, she's saving the baking world from the dearth of poilane bread though.
or maybe i just want to be famous..and loved by the world. :P
either one is fine.

i'll post pictures of the bread in a bit.

report: Ok. the bread was awful awful!
very dense. it didn't rise. i'm not sure whether it's my fault or not. but i'll try again one more time. this time i'll increase the hydration % and use some bread flour to increase the gluten content.

but here's what bread shouldn't look like

ok. so far so good. the dough wasn't too dry. it didn't have the gluten stringiness..but i thought - ok gua. soft..almost like my pizza dough.

you can see the curved shape of the dough. :) it came out a little small...i thought..hm..well, maybe because i only used 3 cups of flour. which is a pretty small amount for "miche" - usually the recipe calls for like 6 cups of flour.

ah..the truth revealed. you can see the uneven colour of the bread. the darker bits are dense - the dough didn't rise, even though there is the cell structure i.e. little holes and big holes...

I threw it away.

it was unedible..a real shame.

new loaf

hey hey,
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/1437
check this out - this is what i'm going to make next.
http://recipesfrom4everykitchen.blogspot.com/2006/10/tribute-to-katharine-hepburn-brownies.html
and this. but this one - there's a movie night on thursday. so i'll make brownies for that. :)

i bought a pastry brush/basting brush. sillicone.

work hard koko! all the best for your gmats. God bless.

gaga over banana

I realized why my internet connection was so slow...there was some trouble with my internet etc..anyway, long story short - they disconnected and reconnected me the next day. however, they reconnected me as "ultra light". *sniff. ULTRA LIGHT?? i spend all my time online and they think that ultra light will suffice? nu uh! I called them up to ask why my connection is so slow and found out that they downgraded me. But now, I'm back with "express". :)

Several days ago, I asked cheche what I should do with my bananas that were ripening faster than i liked..
We had several choices, banana cake, banana muffins, banana bread, banana waffles..etc..
I settled for http://chocolateandzucchini.com/archives/2006/11/cake_a_la_banane_flambee_et_noix_de_pecan_caramelisees.php
Banana cake!

lovely pecans. I wasn't sure about the pecans..because the few times that I ate pecans it left a sourish taste in my mouth. but i thought,...hm..ok. pecans. it was a nice day and so I walked to Bulk Barn to get pecans and other goodies like rye floor, spices..etc.

I didn't have matches, so when I went to the grocery store - I looked high and low for a box of matches. ACtually..not really. I know that they usually give out a packet of matches free with cigarettes, so I went straight to the cigarettes counter (which is the customer service counter). Sure enough, they had matches for sale 3 cents per box. But I only had a 20 dollar note. So I asked the lady if she had change. she said "don't worry. oh look, here's 3 cents". :) so I got my box of matches free. the flambe worked a little like..1 second. o_O

The recipe is really nice. It was a little dry, but it was my fault. I realized that it was a little dry but i was too lazy to add more milk. It might be because I added a tbsp of Bird's custard because I didn't have cream. Oh, I didn't have rum so I substituted with Sherry. Just as good. maybe that's why though - is the alcohol content lower? I was pretty liberal with the Sherry though. :)

See how hot it is? Fresh! it steamed up the lenses of my camera.

mm.look at that banana pecan goodness! :D

Congrats cheche on YWAM! well, it's not really congrats but I'm glad that you are obedient to God. :) God be with you as you learn more about missions and how to serve others. Love you!

continuation..

Sorry,
IE went crazy. So I thought I'll post whatever I had and continue my post on a new page.

1 second into the oven. Since I didnt' do the changgih aluminium bit, my pizza was in the oven much longer than 1.40 minutes

see what i mean about the crazy crust? so puffy

internet is sooo slow. it took me 2 hours to put this up. i have another post, but the connection is bad. so till later.

tata

That's right

I went for pilates today. that's right. 1 hour...of pilates, and all I could think of was - man, when i get back, i'm going to make pizza! heehee!














Anyway, I left you with the link to the pizza making guy. no, i didn't foil my oven. o__O
and my dough was a lot drier than his..but my pariah wild yeast didn't fail me. i liked it!
the taste was good. it's a mild yeast so that's nice. it rises alot though..so it kinda looked weird.
however..before i tell you about pizza..while i was daydreaming, or ..hm..motivating myself to continue the class, i thought - hey, how about potatoes! it'll be like fries and pizza. haha
http://creampuffsinvenice.typepad.com/cream_puffs_in_venice/2006/10/le_patattine_fr.html

mistake lah..now too full. haha. i didn't eat all the potatoes, but i love the recipe. the rosemary gives the potatoes a real oomph. a little spicy. nice. :D
O_O i'm fatty with two cheeks.

Anyway, on with the pizza.
So I made the dough a couple of days ago. and it was resting in the fridge. Today, I made two pizzas and froze them. I didn't want them to rise/age too much because then the yeast would have no more food. (unlike the pizza guy, i dont' really know how yeast works - i would like to think that i feed bobo flour and water. don't spoil it for me).

Yes, so my dough couldn't pour out. I KNEW something was wrong, but oh well. I don't know why. he must have either used more water than stated, or his starter was more watery and loose. which is possible. c'est la vie. live and learn.

It didn't really pass the windowpane test, it sorta did, but it was too firm for that. on the whole though, i must say that this is a very handalable (?) dough. and there was no problem stretching it out. I even twirled it in the air. ......it fell down on the floor the first time. :P 10 minute rule..haha. i froze that pizza.

so while walking to school, i practiced my twirl in the air and visualized what was the best way to twirl a pizza. and it worked!!

Before aging

After aging (not the same ball of dough. the one you see above - i didn't let it sit in room temperature for long because i was going to freeze it. so i thought this one is a better example. it was left out for 1 1/2 hours)
Mistake 2: I didn't follow his tomato sauce for the 2nd batch. one whole can of tomatoes was squeezed etc, and it was only enough for the 2 frozen pizzas. so for the 3rd one, i was too lazy to repeat the whole process. true enough, the pizza was water logged. so for the first time, the crust was a lot better than the middle. :)

More apples...more muffins

I still had 2 apples left from my last apple pie endeavour, so I decided to follow in Sook Ning's footsteps and make apple muffins....

I have to say, her knife skills are much more impressive than my peeler skills:



I skipped the streusal topping and opted for just a brown sugar/cinnamon topping....turned out very nice as well. Not too sweet and the sugar caramelised nicely. Mummy.. I think this recipe is nicer than the Better Homes & Gardens one.



I gave as many away as I could as the recipe made 10 BIG muffins...the others I froze. (nb-Yet another plus point- they reheat very well in the microwave). *phew* I dare say that this is going to be the last of apples from me for a loooonnnngggg time....